BCS flawed, but never boring

Three things not to like about November:

Ladies and gentleman, start your snowplows.

Stepping on the scales after Thanksgiving.

Gale-force winds from all the whining about the BCS in college football.

Perhaps you noticed that Barack Obama, the new Chief Tailgater, addressed that last item Sunday during a “60 Minutes” interview. The message of the evening seemed clear enough: What the nation needs most at the moment is a stronger economy, more jobs and an eight-team playoff.

Sigh. Here we go again; the complainers in and around college football not realizing when a sport has it so good.

NASCAR crowned a three-peat champion over the weekend, as Jimmie Johnson turned into Tiger Woods on four wheels. Undoubtedly, the sport wouldn’t have minded if more of the nation had been paying attention.

Baseball is still trying to figure out why its World Series ratings are shrinking like a wool sweater in a dryer.

Boxing would be tickled pink if anyone knew the names of its heavyweight champions. How many ever there are now.

But college football manages to build up conversation and hold attention for months by having a system that gushes with controversy and speculation.

True, sometimes the whole thing turns into a train wreck, impossible to fully understand. But who drives by a train wreck without stopping to watch?

Each Saturday brings new intrigue and quirks and possibilities. Each weekend’s aftermath is a fresh chapter, and what exactly is wrong with that?

But no, an eight-team playoff would solve all the problems. This we hear every year. The nation supposedly demands it.

So, too, does the president-elect. I hate to differ with a man who carried 28 states, but the line for the opposition starts here.

About doing away with controversy …

A playoff this year — using six BCS conference champions and a pair of at-large teams — would not include two of the following: Texas, Texas Tech, Oklahoma, Florida, Alabama and USC. Even, possibly, if they had only one loss.

(You can almost hear the howls.)

An eight-team playoff would likely not include an unbeaten Boise State or Utah.

(You can virtually hear the screams.)

An eight-team playoff could include Cincinnati, which lost 52-26 to Oklahoma, but not Oklahoma. It could include Maryland, which lost one game to Middle Tennessee State and another 31-0, but not Ohio State, which has been beaten only by teams ranked at the time in the top three.

(You can all but hear the wails.)

An eight-team playoff devalues the regular season, even as it gives birth to its own generation of teeth-gnashing.

Give me a system that is flawed, just like the humans who devised it. But one that is also unpredictable and noisy, just like the humans who play it.

And if the finish is a tad messy — so? Half the fun is getting there. The BCS may not always be logical or orderly, but it is never boring.

How to fit an eight-team playoff into a schedule that already runs 13 games for conference title participants? “You could trim back on the regular season,” Obama said in his interview.

The athletic directors who pay the bills just fainted.

I hope the new president has better ideas for my retirement account.